The Persephone presentation by Helena Margaret Earl, MBBS, PhD, got a lot of publicity after a pre–ASCO Annual Meeting press release, suggesting that 6 months of adjuvant trastuzumab (Herceptin) is enough. The advice of experts has been that the evidence is inconclusive, but I have not heard a...
What was an MBA doing at the podium of a clinical oncology meeting? Ten years ago or so, that might have been surprising. But in an era of rapid change—in therapies, costs, payment models, and practice—it only makes sense. Amy Porter-Tacoronte, MBA, Health System Chief Administrative Officer at the ...
An interactive online LGBT cultural competency training program for oncologists may be acceptable and feasible—and may improve LGBT-related knowledge and clinical practices, according to preliminary results of a pilot study of oncologists in Florida presented by Schlumbrecht et al at...
A prognostic model developed using a machine learning approach may be able to identify African American patients with breast cancer who have an increased risk of death, according to results of a study presented by Bhattarai et al at the 11th AACR Conference on The Science of Cancer Health...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently granted Breakthrough Therapy designation to LOXO-292, a selective RET inhibitor, for the treatment of patients with advanced RET fusion–positive thyroid cancer who require systemic therapy, have had disease progression following...
Neoadjuvant erlotinib (Tarceva) benefits selected patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-mutated non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who undergo complete resection of stage IIIA-N2 disease, according to a randomized study comparing erlotinib with gemcitabine plus cisplatin as...
The combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) and low-dose ipilimumab (Yervoy) could become a new first-line treatment in patients with microsatellite instability–high (MSI-H), mismatch repair–deficient (dMMR) metastatic colorectal cancer, following results from the CheckMate-142 trial reported ...
The phase I NRG Oncology clinical trial BR001 tested the hypothesis that stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) could be used safely in patients with oligometastatic disease characterized by multiple metastases. Results from the trial indicate that using SBRT is safe as treatment for patients with 2 ...
In a Dutch study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Henricks et al found that DPYD genotype–guided dosing reduced the frequency of severe fluoropyrimidine toxicity in patients with cancer. Increased fluoropyrimidine toxicity is associated with reduced activity of the metabolic...
In a 2-year follow-up of the phase III SUPREMO trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Velikova et al found worse chest wall symptoms in women with intermediate-risk breast cancer who did vs did not receive postmastectomy radiotherapy. No other differences in quality-of-life outcomes were found ...
Three prominent medical societies have issued a new clinical guideline for physicians treating men with early-stage prostate cancer using external-beam radiation therapy (EBRT). Adoption of the guideline could make treatment shorter and more convenient for many patients with prostate cancer....
On October 30, 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in combination with carboplatin and either paclitaxel or nanoparticle albumin-bound (nab)-paclitaxel (Abraxane) as first-line treatment of metastatic squamous non–small cell lung...
Adjuvant treatment with zoledronic acid, plus hormonal therapy with the aromatase inhibitor letrozole, significantly increases disease-free survival compared to tamoxifen in premenopausal women with hormone receptor–positive early breast cancer, according to results reported by Perrone et al...
The first report of a large international clinical trial shows that, for men who show signs of prostate cancer after surgical removal of their prostates, extending radiation therapy to the pelvic lymph nodes combined with adding short-term androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) to standard treatment...
In a single-institution study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Alderuccio et al found that not achieving complete remission (CR) after initial treatment, elevated lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), and more than four nodal sites at marginal zone lymphoma diagnosis are predictive of...
Treatment of renal cell carcinoma with stereotactic radiation therapy is as safe and effective for patients with one kidney as it is for those with two, according to an analysis of an international data set presented by Correa et al at the 60th Annual Meeting of the American Society for...
In the first randomized, phase II clinical trial of its kind, researchers have shown that an aggressive form of high-precision radiation therapy can increase survival in patients with oligometastatic tumors. These findings were presented by Palma et al in the plenary session at the 60th Annual ...
The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) recently issued a statement on lung cancer screening with low-dose computed tomography (CT) based on the results of the Dutch-Belgian NELSON lung cancer screening trial presented at the IASLC 19th World Conference on Lung Cancer...
Adding radiation therapy or surgery to systemic therapy for patients with stage IV lung cancer whose cancer has spread to a limited number of sites can significantly extend overall survival, according to new results from a multicenter, randomized, controlled phase II study. The findings were...
A highly sensitive blood test that detects minute traces of cancer-specific DNA has been shown to accurately determine whether patients with human papillomavirus (HPV)-related oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC) are free from cancer following radiation therapy. Findings were presented by...
A subset of patients with low-risk breast cancer is highly unlikely to see cancer return following breast conservation surgery, but can lower that risk even further with radiation therapy, finds a new long-term clinical trial report. These 12-year follow-up data from the only prospective,...
In a 10-year study of women who received radiation therapy to treat early-stage breast cancer, those receiving fewer, larger individual radiation doses experienced similarly low rates of late-onset side effects as those undergoing conventional radiation therapy. Findings from the...
A phase III trial has determined that cisplatin chemotherapy combined with radiation therapy showed high amounts of activity in human papillomavirus (HPV)-related head and neck cancer. Findings from NRG-RTOG 1016 were presented by Trotti et al the 60th Annual Meeting of the American Society for...
A new analysis of genetic data from a large prospective registry and clinical data from several randomized trials indicates that African American patients may have comparatively higher cure rates when treated with radiation therapy than Caucasian patients. The study, which is the first report...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved levoleucovorin (Khapzory) injection, a folate analog, for three indications: rescue after high-dose methotrexate therapy in patients with osteosarcoma; diminishing the toxicity associated with overdosage of folic acid...
In an analysis of the phase III GALLIUM trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Trotman et al found that end-of-induction fluorodeoxyglucose positron-emission tomography (PET) after first-line immunochemotherapy appeared to better predict treatment outcomes than contrast-enhanced computed tomography ...
Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) improved survival in patients with head and neck cancer that has recurred or metastasized in the KEYNOTE-048 trial, according to late-breaking results from the study reported by Burtness et al at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress (Abstract...
Patients with human papillomavirus (HPV)-positive throat cancer responded better to chemoradiotherapy than to cetuximab (Erbitux) with radiotherapy, according to late-breaking research reported by Mehanna et al at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress (Abstract LBA9_PR)....
The grandson of Italian immigrants, Philip J. DiSaia was born on August 14, 1937, in Providence, Rhode Island. He earned his Bachelor’s in Science at Brown University and his MD at Tufts University. Upon the advice of his mentor in medical school, Dr. DiSaia obtained 2 years of general surgery...
For patients with early kidney cancer, surgically removing a portion of the kidney instead of the whole organ is often a preferred treatment, because the procedure can effectively remove tumors while preserving kidney function. But when it comes to the best surgical approach—robotic, laparoscopic, ...
In an interim analysis of the French phase III noninferiority Carmena trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Arnaud Méjean, MD, PhD, of the Hôpital Européen Georges Pompidou, and colleagues found that sunitinib alone was not inferior in overall survival vs nephrectomy followed by...
Radiation therapy for early-stage follicular lymphoma “is underused,” Joanna C. Yang, MD, MPH, and Joachim Yahalom, MD, declared in a recent editorial in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.1 This underuse of radiation therapy can result in overtreatment with systemic therapies or overconfidence in...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies sometimes used by patients with cancer. Although physical activity is associated with many positive outcomes in the general population,...
For this installment of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor, Jame Abraham, MD, interviewed Kanti R. Rai, MD, Professor of Medicine at the Karches Center for Oncology Research, Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, Manhasset; Professor of Medicine at Zucker School of Medicine at...
I’m a psychiatrist, so I don’t say this lightly: receiving a diagnosis of stage IV gastric adenocarcinoma made me insane. I had remembered the horrible deaths due to abdominal cancer I had seen during my medical training and was terrified that would be my fate as well. I knew from looking at the...
To gain further insight into, among other things, optimizing big data and the latest on hormonal breast cancer treatment, The ASCO Post recently spoke with pioneering oncologist Christopher C. Benz, MD, a breast cancer specialist and Director of the Cancer & Developmental Therapeutics Program, ...
Recently, the term “personalized medicine” in oncology care has been overtaken by the more contemporary concept of “precision medicine.” According to the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, the newer terminology shifts the focus to improving...
On April 10, 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved everolimus tablets for oral suspension (Afinitor Disperz) for the adjunctive treatment of adult and pediatric patients aged ≥ 2 years with tuberous sclerosis complex–associated partial-onset seizures.1,2 Tuberous sclerosis complex is ...
A pair of studies showcased the potentially devastating long-term health and financial consequences cancer has on adult survivors of childhood cancer compared with other adults, as well as survival disparities based on health insurance status.1,2 Despite increasing survival rates among the more...
Nationally regarded breast cancer researcher and clinician Joyce A. O’Shaughnessy, MD, was born in upstate New York, just outside of Albany, where she attended grade school before her family moved to Beverly, Massachusetts, a suburban town 26 miles from Boston, where her family’s roots were....
Radiotherapy to the prostate improved overall survival in men newly diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer who have a low metastatic disease burden, but not in those with higher burden of disease, according to results from a preplanned analysis of a large comparison study reported by Parker et...
Two-year maintenance therapy with olaparib (Lynparza), a poly ADP-ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor, led to a substantial improvement in progression-free survival (PFS) in newly diagnosed patients with advanced ovarian cancer and a BRCA1/2 mutation, results from the phase III SOLO-1 trial...
When Frederick B. Sontag’s wife, Susan, was diagnosed in 1994 with grade III astrocytoma, the couple was understandably overwhelmed to hear that her expected survival was 3 years. At that time, there were few organizations providing resources to patients with brain tumors and their families. While...
“I realized I just couldn’t wait for a new treatment option,” a determined Breelyn Wilky, MD, says, staring into the camera. “I had to find one.” If you missed the debut of the “Breakthroughs Save Lives” video during the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, look for it on television and the Internet as part...
More than 100 ASCO volunteers from across the country came to Capitol Hill on September 25–26 for the 2018 ASCO Advocacy Summit, where they urged Congress to act on major policy priorities to support cancer research and ensure access to high-quality care for the millions of people in the United...
Three new Vice-Chairs of the Scientific Advisory Committee of Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) were announced by the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), the Scientific Partner of SU2C. They are Nobel Laureate Elizabeth H. Blackburn, PhD, of the University of California San Francisco;...
According to Kaveh Shojania, MD, the keynote speaker at the 2018 ASCO Quality Care Symposium, dedicated quality improvement work can help repair a fragmented health-care delivery system, but it’s challenging, and there are multiple things that can go wrong during the process.1 “I’ve developed this ...
Friends of Cancer Research (Friends) recognized Senators Orrin Hatch (R–UT) and Michael Bennet (D–CO) for responding to a recently identified public health issue and proposing a solution to an issue impacting patients and their physicians. Senators Hatch and Bennet jointly introduced the Making...
As the nation battles an escalating opioid-overdose crisis, which claims more than 100 lives per day, a new study presented at the 2018 ASCO Quality Care Symposium was designed to answer a heretofore unanswered question: How common are opioid-related deaths in patients with cancer?1 Unintended...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Ghassan K. Abou-Alfa, MD, and colleagues, and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, the phase III CELESTIAL trial has demonstrated that cabozantinib (Cabometyx) improved the median overall survival to 10.2 months in comparison to 8 months...